This invention relates generally to a compacter for maintaining a bulky compressible item in a tightly rolled condition to make the item more easily transportable. The compacter is particularly useful by campers and backpackers to tightly roll items of bedding, such as sleeping bags, mattresses, foam rubber pads, blankets and the like.
A wide variety of strap-type devices exist in the prior art for clamping or holding a wide variety of different articles. For example, strap-type devices have been used to hold different types of articles on a supporting platform (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,852,827 and 2,896,296); to apply a compressive force to opposed platens of a hand press (see U.S. Pat. No. 2,448,288) and to anchor large articles, such as mobile homes, planes or boats (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,673,642 and 3,881,694). Although all of these devices include a mechanism for tightening a strap, or band, to either clamp or hold one or more articles, none of these mechanisms are particularly well suited for use in low cost, light weight, easy to operate units of the type that a camper might use to tightly roll up a sleeping bag or similar item, to make it more easily transportable.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,987,318, issued to Backenecker, while directed to art that is completely nonanalogous to the instant invention, does disclose a device employing an apron that is connected at one of its ends to a rotatable rod that is turned by a lever to foreshorten the apron and thereby tighten it about a ham roll. This device is used to shape the ham, and can actually be left on the ham while it is being cooked or cured. When the apron is tightened to the desired degree a rachet wheel and pawl arrangement is provided to prevent it from unwrapping. While the device disclosed by Backenecker may be suited for its intended function, it is bulkier and more complex than is desirable for use in rolling up camping items to make them more easily transportable.